Reduce obesity and improve Patient Safety?

I have read much material lately about addressing the obesity epidemic and there are many commonalities in the latest theories.
1. Motivation- focusing on motivation as a strategy is not the best approach. Willpower has been dismissed by many as a poor approach to weight management
2. Behavior change- changing behaviors is not easy. Much of a person’s day consists of habitual activities resulting from cues from tv, peers, childhood… example wanting to eat popcorn while watching a movie, reaching for the salt before tasting food…
3. Environment changes-For obesity this holds the most promise. Its seen in weight watchers programs and Wansink’s book Slimdown by design. Change architecture and nudging can help make behavior change easier and lasting. This includes things like using smaller colorfull plates, moving healthy foods to a prominent kitchen spot and unhealthy foods to hidden cabinets. In some estimates people who follow certain environmental patterns are 18% thinner than those who do not.

What’s the correlation with patient safety?
1. Motivation- focusing on motivation as a strategy is not the best approach. Motivating staff to be more vigilant? Teaching them? Telling them to Follow rules and policies? These have not been shown to increase safety measurably. In fact sometimes recognizing when to deviate from rules can add resilience
2. Behavior change- changing behaviors is not easy. Other articles on this cite describe many nursing behaviors as being based on tradition and automatic behavior. Often under stress people revert back to old knowledge. How many times has an initiative been rolled out only to see it vanished from practice within a year?
3. Environment changes- just as in obesity management here we might find the most bang for our buck so to speak. Make it easy for staff to do the right thing. Make it hard for staff to do the wrong thing. Create systems that nudge staff toward safe behaviors. Use change architecture to produce reliability

A healthier world depends on reducing obesity and unsafe patient care. Maybe the solutions to both are the same.

About this blog: You’ve heard of Leapfrog now there’s SafetyDog!

This blog will merge ideas from management, nursing, medicine and psychology (and many others) to offer a different view of patient safety. The author has a Masters in Industrial-Organizational Psychology, a graduate certificate in Error Science and Patient Safety and also a BSN in Nursing and has worked as an RN since 1985. All comments are welcome..you never know when one of your thoughts might save a life!

Patient Safety

IOM
Institute of Medicine..their 1999 report “To Err is human” started it all.

Leap Frog Group
The Consumer Reports for hospitals. Encouraging transparency and comparison of quality and safety.

ISMP
Institute for Safe Medication Practices. If you are looking for information on safe medication practices (and unsafe ones) they have great newsletters and other resources.

IHI
The Institute for Healthcare Improvement has an entire section on patient safety.

AHRQ
The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Great site from the Department of Health and Human services. Contains research articles and safety guidelines and tools. The link is to Patient safety net

Healthcare Quarterly
Best practices and peer reviewed articles. Editor is a PhD from the University of North Carolina.